Reprinted with permission from the
Wethersfield Post, February 8, 1973.

Famous Wethersfield Voices on the Air

Robert L. Steele

by Cynthia Lang

"This morning thing is part of my life and I love
it"

Even the letters in alphabet soup must mind their P's and
Q's when they float in Robert L. Steele's plate. I don't know whether or not Bob eats
alphabet soup. But it is a well-known fact that the famous man and voice from Wethersfield
has an intense respect for he pronunciation of letter line-ups. And it is a safe bet that
he can call an impressive number of big league line-ups over a good many years in just
about any sport. When it comes to boxing he can call any set of opponents and their
punches. Bob Steele is a man who knows the score.

In music? An integral part of his six-day-a-week program
are recordings chosen to ease listeners into the rhythm of a new day and he will tell you
that an announcer must be able to pronounce names as thought he were brought up to it.

"News, an interview with a visiting Chinese dignitary,
describing a fire, parade, a flood, or announcing a classical music program, you have to
know the peculiarities of various languages. What happens when different letter
combinations get together. I'm talking about a good announcer. The best knows English, is
conscious of pronunciation, strives to be correct," said the man who started as a
staff announcer in 19936.

It was a hard road that Bob traveled from 1919 to 1936.
From Kansas City, Missouri to Hartford Connecticut where he commands the largest morning
audience of any radio personality.

"In this business people wonder what your real name
is," he said. "Mine is Steele." Born on July 13, 1911, in Kansas City he
was the only child of a mother who was a missouri native of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His
father was Pennsylvania Dutch.

He sometimes jokes about how it took six years for him to
go through high school, "I had to quit. Dropped out three times." But it wasn't
funny: "Mother and I were alone in the world. She was divorced from my father when I
was five. we had kind of a tough time. I worked at age eight, from six until 11 at night
delivering for a drugstore, prescriptions and the usual, and earned $5 a week, with tips
maybe another $2.50." Most people thought he was 10 or 11.

"I was never without a job. I have worked hard all my
life." At 13, Bob had a job in a drug store at five a.m. to get it ready for the
seven o'clock opening. "I mopped the floor." This was in 1924 and he got $14 a
week for that. "I'm used to getting up early. Once had a morning paper route. So this
morning thing is part of my life and I love it."

Air time for the Bob Steele show is 6 a.m. Sometimes in the
summer, "only under the most ideal conditions," he rides from his home in
Wethersfield at 5:15 a.m. it takes 20 minute to Broadcast House coming down Franklin pr
Wethersfield Avenue. He makes the return trip at 11 a.m. and if people have heard on the
air that he's riding some will be out there along the route waving and calling, "He,
Bob." Of such recognition he says frankly, "When it's a possibility you desire
it and are eager to have it happen."

One thing he did not desire, when he was at an age not much
after five, was the middle name he was christened with. Five-year-old Robert Jesse Steele
hated the little kid nest door. He was mean and his name was Jesse. Even at that age Bob
was aware of General Robert E. Lee of history. He told his mother that he wanted to change
his middle name to Lee. "In the records in Kansas City it is still Jesse, but not to
me. I just couldn't stand that kid."

As Robert Lee Steele he left Kansas City at 19, and went to
Los Angeles. It was during the depression. The year was 1930. He left his mother in Kansas
City and said he'd send for her as soon as he got a job. Within six weeks Bob became a
motorcycle messenger for the Security First National of Los Angeles with 21 bank branches
between L.A. and Beverly Hills. "I had to hit every one within one minute of the
schedule." With the new job in hand he asked his mother to come out to L.A. where
they lived for six years.

The shadows of the depression lengthened across the years.
President Franklin D. roosevelt established the W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration)
creating jobs for people in the U.S.A. Bob worked with the W.P.A. as a time-keeper on a
sewer project earning the then top wage of $94 a month. "Just lucky to have one of
those jobs."

In 1936, a friend, a motorcycle racer, had quit racing to
become a promotor. George Lannom (who lives in Virginia now and is a friend of Art
McGinley's) had come to hartford to promote motorcycle racing in Bulkeley Stadium:
"The stadium, named after Morgan Bulkeley, first president of the National League,
was where our team was in the Eastern League. Leo Durocher, Warren Spahn, Lo Gehrig
("The Iron Man" great star of the Yankees), all played in Hartford.

There was a motorcycle raceway around the outside limits of
the playing field, a cinder track one-fifth of a mile long. Baseball drew capacity crowds
and so, on Tuesday nights, did the motorcycle race, 6,500 people. George wrote Bob i 1936
inviting him to be an announcer on the P.A. system, and do public relations for him for
the fine salary of $30 a week.

"One day to do anything I wanted"

In September, at the end of the first racing season, Bob
was getting ready to go back to California. "I had one day to do nothing before going
to Patterson, New Jersey, to ride with a friend to California.

"One day to do anything I wanted. I was going to a
show. The show was a mystery and there was one hour before the show." He took that
hour and went across to The Travelers on Central Row, knowing that there wa a radio
station upstairs. Up he went: "I just wonder if you have an opening for an
announcer?" They did. They'd just fired a man. Paul Morency was the Big Man at WTIC.
Twelve men had been auditioned for the job, mostly from N.B.C. in New York. Paul Morency
gave Bob an audition: "O.K., we'll hire you. You can start tomorrow."

"I never went to the show, to Patterson, or to
California." The last 36 years plus years have been spent here in Connecticut.

Romance, in the person of Shirley Hanson, came down from
the 11th floor in The Travelers where Shirley worked in the Actuarial Department, to the
sixth floor where WTIC was located. It was a casual meeting for Shirley Hanson,. whose
parent came from a little town near Stockholm, Sweden, and Bob Steele. That meting later
became a marriage. When they were expecting their first son they moved out of their
Hartford apartment where children weren't wanted, to a little new house on Buckland Road
in Wethersfield.

The house cost $5,700, brand new. "There wasn't a tree
on the property then and there wasn't any grass. The ad said, `4-rm Cape Cod, 2 unfinished
upstairs.' A down payment of $600 and we could only raise $500. We paid the rest over a
period of time." In 1959, the Steeles had four boys and needed more room. They moved
to Wolcott Hill.

Today, U.S. Congressman Robert H. Steele, 34, and his wife
have four children. Paul 32, and his wife have two children and live in Lexington,
Massachusetts where he teaches at Lexington High. Philip, 28, married, with one child,
teaches at Mt. Hermon Preparatory School. Steven, 22, is interested in modern music and
lives at home.

Career-wise the father, Robert L., did staff announcing for
several years until it was decided that the radio station WTIC needed a sports program.
"In 1938 I started Strictly Sports, chose the title myself. It's still Strictly
Sports even though I don't do it any more."

In 1957 Bob did the TV program Close-Up on Sports. "I
quit that in 1968 I think it was. because it was too much work with evening and morning
shows. With sports requiring so much, you have to go to them, interview all day long, then
come back and develop film and edit it."

He was TV and Radio Sports Director until 1968. "I
dropped it and it was taken over by George W. (for Washington) Ehrlich, Sports Director
for TV and Radio."

His morning program keep him going. He takes work home with
him and answers in longhand, on a post card, about half of the 400 letters he receives
each week. The morning show became "The Bob Steele Show" in 1943, "When I
took it it was known as `G. Fox Morning Watch.'" That show lasted for an hour, 7-8,
then began to expand; 7-8:30, then 7-9, 6:45-9, 6:45-10, then 6-10.

The format has evolved over a period of years. Weather is
always at the same time, sports, children's story, birthday people (80 years of age or
more), wedding anniversaries (60 years or more). "We feel that the peak hour is 7-8
and like to establish little features during the later hours."

"I can't possibly point to a typical listener"

"The format has grown and developed by itself. It
carries me along. I just get on for the ride. We know what is next and the listener knows
what time it is by what he's hearing." Young people always listen on mornings when
the weather is bad. Bob gets letters from kids 12 and under responding to what he's said
at ten-after-six. "I'll write back to them"

"It's interesting to wonder why people are up early.
And what their ages are. I can't possibly point to a typical listener. So I talk to our
engineer, Dick French (Tuesday through Saturday) and Ben Zinkerman (Monday) and try to say
something to make them laugh. They've got to sit in that studio running the thing. We have
a break from 8-8:15."

Sunday is the only day to really relax. And wouldn't you
know, he wakes up at 5:00.

Something special he likes to do? "I like everything.
Don't really have a hobby. A little cartooning, a little golf. I like to cook but my wife
is such a good cook I don't like to interfere."

He does like to take trips on his vacation: "I like to
drive to Florida or California. I enjoy it. Like to get off the expressways and go through
the towns. See the architecture in various parts of the country. It's just interesting to
get a little closer to the States. Along the roads the changing billboards. In Missouri
and Indiana, `Chew Red Man for a little better chew.' You never get it when you're in an
airplane, the greenery, topography. So that's a hobby of mine, touring by car."

Of the place where he lives: "I just like Connecticut
better than any place. It's my home. This is the garden spot of the United States in my
opinion. Wethersfield is a favorite town. Wethersfield has a personality all its own"

How he feels about recommending his career to young people:
"This business, Radio-TV, is rewarding work. I'd highly recommend it to any young man
or woman interested in training for this career. They should have a good voice, a knack
for speaking well, for enunciating. Know grammar, pronunciation. Such a person would be
valuable to this business and ought to get into it."

A man with a tremendous personality, a lot of drive. He can
punt puns with the best of them for he is the best, a pro who not only accepts criticism
but believes that you must accept it in order to keep on growing. Robert L. Steele, one of
the famous Wethersfield voices on the air.